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Gentoo Linux Reloaded
nitro322 writes "Daniel Robbins, the leading developer for Gentoo Linux, has written an excellent O'Reilly Network article covering many of the various features of Gentoo, what's coming in version 1.4 (due out SOON), and why you should give it a try. If you haven't tried Gentoo yet, what are you waiting for?"
What's next, a Cunni Lingux distribution?
Lets defuse this bomb before it happens.
:-)
Gentoo is a really nice distro. I wouldn't say it's for newbies and it's definitely geared for developers. The install isn't a cinch but it's very thorough. Before we get into a holy war with sides saying Sorcerer is better or Slackware this or Redhat that - lets try and keep the discussion about Gentoo itself... what is good or bad about it - and maybe help out Dan Robbins with useful constructive suggestions. Now... have at it
Have a Happy.
As with most groundbreaking papers in academia, Robbins' piece starts off with "Hi there."
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I'm waiting for Mandrake as my desktop and Debian as my server to fail spectacularly to live up to my expectations of a desktop or server OS.
When they do so fail, I'll try Gentoo, among other things.
It's been a few years. I'm not predicting spectacular failure anytime in the next few months.
fifth sigma, inc.
I noticed, especially over the last few days than nearly every story that eugina and the crew post is copied right over to slashdot.
:)
It's not like osnews is just a news site, it does have a forum like slashdot, so why is all the duplication coming.
More Original posts please
Gentoo needs to make a version that will still compile the software on the system without having to download. Some of us don't have room mates that understand having a dial-up for 5 days straight.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
K6-350...
It will take HOW long to download, and compile? yeah right..
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
If you haven't tried Gentoo yet, what are you waiting for?
I'm waiting for it to finish compiling!
I tried installing gentoo linux in a time not so far away and it seemed like the install was going fine and that the documentation was fairly good until I got to the end.... I installed gentoo linux with ReiserFS support and at the end when I went to compile my kernel I learned a nasty little detail.... ReiserFS support was pulled from the gentoo modified kernel... go figure. If you're going to update your distro then you need to update your documentation as well. Documentation makes the user experience better by providing them with instructions and reference to quickly answer questions without hours of banging head against keyboard.
We could all benefit from my education.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I'm waiting for an install process that isn't quite as big a pain in the ass. I've installed several distros, and am relatively competent, however Gentoo's install is royally messed. Boot from the CD, copy files over, uncompress, install, grab another bz2 file, copy it over, etc. It doesn't have to be GUI, but something less draconian would be nice.
Ummm... /. deleted the story?
Wow. How nice.
Back when I started Linux around '97 or '98, Slackware was the "in" distro. People who started using Slackware back then did so because they thought they were 7337 and at every opportunity they would espouse its benefits. I started with Slackware too and am happy I did and probably was an annoying Slackware prophet from time to time. But I can't help but laugh when I see the similarities between some of the younger Gentoo users and the Slackware users of yesteryear. These particular Gentoo users seem to think they're hot stuff and mock anyone who uses another distro, or at the very least dismiss their 7337ness. Yet, if everyone started using Gentoo like droves of users use RedHat or Mandrake, I'm sure Gentoo would lose a great deal of its appeal for some of these users. I suppose the torch has been passed from the "Slackware is for hardcore users", to "Gentoo is for hardcore users" mantra.
First a caveat. The Gentoo install is not for the faint of heart. In most cases, right off the bat you've to compile a kernel. Most large compiles take a day. kde can take a day to compile. mozilla takes the usual hour or so. If you can look past all that, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
:-)
Here are the promised helpful links.
Gentoo Home Page
Gentoo x86 install instructions
Gentoo FAQ
Gentoo Desktop Guide
Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Bugzilla
That should keep you busy for a week, at least.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
If I am installing it on 10 machines (different platforms x86, PPC etc), each time it wants to download the whole thing. I am ok to wait a compilation for each new box type (later I'll just copy hdd images to similar boxes), but why should it download 10 times?
Because I just finished installing and configuring all of my Linux boxes with either RH 7.3 or RH 8.0
Besides, I like the guy with the red brim a little better than the backwards, purple pac-man.
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Frankly, I've got several computers, Linux or otherwise, all performing their tasks and they're Working Just Fine(tm). Why risk them?
I find it interesting how many people like having to compile everything and use a distro with such a archaic(not bad, just outdated compared to todays distros) install routine.
What's even more interesting is how many people have left Debian for Gentoo. Debian users are some of the most loyal I know, and yet many of them have simply moved on. I'm guessing Debian blew it with the long delay's between releases.
I also have to say after using linux for a while now, I just have no desire or need to get down and dirty with my distro, am I surprised as many people still are. Keep in mind I'm talking about desktop use where I just want to get my work done, not server use, where I do end up compiling some of my apps.
Personally I just don't have any interest in Gentoo or that style of distro, but obviously not everyone feels that way, since it does seem to be one of the up and coming distros.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Why should I use Gentoo? Really. Is there some huge feature comparison matrix for all the different distros? Is there really any major innovation between distros?
I don't run *nix that much. I have a dual boot at home for Mandrake 8.2 and W2K. Do different distros really only matter to the elite linux hackers?
If you haven't tried Gentoo yet, what are you waiting for?
I'm waiting for it to have over 4000 packages tested and available. I'm waiting for it to have widely available high performace mirrors that serve binaries, so I only have to compile when I want to, and I can be using that new piece of software in seconds. I'm waiting for it to have a proven track record for strict filesystem hirearchy standard compliance (the same standard each release, please). I'm waiting for it to run on all the platforms I currently use (still missing arm). I'm waiting for it to have a dedicated team of hundreds of developers that release security updates in hours (In binary form so that I don't have to wait for compilation for security). I'm waiting for transparent integration of non-"free" software into the standard package installation system. And most importantly, I'm waiting to find any reason why my current system may be insufficient, or even sub-optimal, because I don't feel the need to fix what isn't broken.
Glad you asked?
Gentoo is a very up to date version of linux. Most of the packages available are the latest stable versions. Installing from an cd means the next 'emerge world' will end up downloading lots of packages as it updates your system. The older the install cd the more downloading to be done. That would defeat the purpose of loading everything from cd in the first place.
The site's all fscked up.
Apache errors, database errors, the fronpage keeps changing, what up? I do like the screwed up frontpage with the ads tiled diagonally across it. It's different anyway.
- dependency problems in some portage scripts and
- having to compile everything.
It may be a great thing, but when i wanted to try a new program right away, waiting for it to compile was a definite pain in the arse.Now, as far as my dependency issues, i'm not sure if they got them resolved with the new version of portage, but it might be worth checking out. At any rate, i love dselect and i dunno if i'll be reinstalling now that i got the unofficial kde3 debs working
|---------------|
practically an AC
>>If you haven't tried Gentoo yet, what are you waiting for?
emerge system, that's what.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
For those of you that site install time, you didn't read the article did you? For 1.4 there is pre-compiled binary install that only takes 1hr. Check it out, it's worth it and you learn a lot.
-- DuckWing
With my newest box, it came down to either being Debian or Gentoo. Gentoo would only do a CD install (I didn't have a CD-R) so Debian won. Give me a floppy/FTP install and I will give it a go.
Michael Loves Me!
I've been a slackware user for 5 years. Only slackware. No other distro.
Then I tried Gentoo recently. It's everything I wanted. the Ultimate power of customization (save LFS), everything from source, etc. The speed difference IS noticeable in every app, as long as you have a clue about optimization flags for your CPU.
The only real problem is that two things are essential:
1) Moderately fast system
2) Fair connection to the ineternet
I have dial up at home, so I brough my system to work and installed there. Ever since, I haven't had to download too many huge ebuilds (packages) over dial up. Things are good.
Check it out some day.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Only a few months ago, I tried gentoo and had like 10 broken ebuilds while installing. That was too much for me, so I wiped it and put slack back.
So, in August, I gave Gentoo another shot. Only had one faulty ebuild on the install, which is ok with me. Skip ahead a few weeks, I install the GCC 3.2 1.4 pre-release. Not a single problem during the base install, and no problems with anything else either(kde, gnome, mozilla, etc).
Overall, I'm very impressed with how far Gentoo has come. Thanks to everyone who contributes to the project!
---
---
Always standing, I am a tree awaiting the lightning. -Samael, Crown
To all those who have mentioned the difficulty of the install, when I made the switch to Gentoo I had only installed maybe 5 or 10 other Linux boxen (Redhat, Mandrake, etc...), and Gentoo wasn't all that different.
/.; if you don't have that approach then perhaps that is why you don't like Gentoo.
It was more INVOLVED, but not more difficult per say. If you print out the instructions from the site and follow them, good things will happen.
For those who think that another distribution (especially a source-based one like this) is pointless and only for the uber-geeks, think again. The idea behind distributions like Gentoo is CONTROL. When you have finished your first Gentoo and compiled everything for your specific hardware it is a distinctly different feeling than throwing in a Redhat disk and pressing 'go'.
Those attracted to Gentoo are those attracted to having everything just the way they like it on their computers (and arguably in their lives as well). It's an approach to computing that many have here on
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
I have an old P166 CTX laptop with a 1.6G hard drive I got back in '98. I did the Gentoo download and bootstrap build approach a couple days ago. It started compiling around midnight, and was still gcc'ing away at 8:30 the next morning when I left for work.
:)
When I got home, it had aborted due to being unable to connect to their rsync machine (a problem that others have reported as well) so I kicked the whole process off again. This time, I think my poor old harddrive gave up the ghost from all the thrashing. Now I get nothing but hda errors, even when I boot from a tomsrtbt floppy. It's almost like Gentoo slashdotted my hard drive..
I'll give gentoo another try after I find a new laptop HD on ebay... (Anyone got a 2-6 Gig 2.5" notebook IDE drive that needs a new home?)
So yeah, plan on some compile time if you have anything less than a speedy box...
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
Acutally, I tried Gentoo as a semi-newbie. I've nearly all the major releases working but, it wasn't until I installed Gentoo that I really learned the inner workings of Linux systems. That was a HUGE benifit. If you are an 'experienced newbie' I would suggest if you have the Phat Pipe (TM) and l337 Hardware (TM), then wade into this full blast. Even if you don't keep Gentoo as you distribution of choice--You'll be better for the experience. The task is challenging but the documentation is good. I also personally like the non-bloatware feature and portage system (I admit nothing about being a BSD user!--you have no proof!).
Like I said give it a try. At the very least you can pick up some skills and that is worth the compile times (on a 1.2Ghz w/ 256DDR system takes me about a long evening start to command line--then emerge gnome or kde while you sleep).
Cthulhu for president!
You should read the install instructions on the Gentoo site. If you have a bootable floppy that can:
- fdisk the install drive / partitions
- format the partitions
- give you a working network connection
- Let you run a command shell with ftp and chroot working
That's all you need. You can probably use that Debian floppy to install Gentoo. Of course, there's the matter of downloading a 50-100 MB tarball + kernel sources for the initial install, plus more downloading and several hours of compiling to get a usable system. But you can do it without a CD (or even a CD-ROM drive).
Dan
I used to use Redhat, Mandrake, and even once paid the $40 for SuSE. EVerytime either Mandrake or Redhat released a new version, I waited eagerly in anticipation, and sometimes stayed uo all night so I could be the first to download the iso's. With Gentoo I don't have the strong "need" to upgrade anymore, because it gave me so much control over things, that eventually I was able to get it running just the way I like it. "Perfect" in a sense. It's funny how now I have no reason to do a "fresh install" of anything, and I'm running the latest and greatest software. Good shit (tm)
I'll be the first to admit that I have problems with GNU/Linux left and right (minor ones at that) with the major distros that I have tried (Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian). Gentoo was no different. Some ebuilds didn't complete, and some just didn't work. The thing that kept me using Gentoo was the website, and the friendly help I got in the forums.
There was no question too big or too small when it came to asking for help. I also think that their website is one of the simplest yet thorough sites to navigate around. Not only did I quickly solve my problems, but I ended up with a Desktop install that works faster than anything else I tried. I also gained knowledge about GNU/Linux that I would never had gotten from using a distro like Mandrake.
Also, I don't know about anyone else, but I find it much easier to grab packages from the Gentoo mirrors than to look them up, and download them myself. All of these priceless goodies without even mentioning the benefits of portage which a lot of slashdot'ers are quick to shoot down or overlook in some blind way.
"I'm waiting for Linux to get where FreeBSD is for ease of building..."
that's where gentoo is. the *point* of gentoo is that it uses the ports system... so congratulations to you, no more waiting
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
"If you haven't tried Gentoo yet, what are you waiting for?"
Err, the building process.
...is the one they're not using.
Gento is source based, meaning big compile times. However, it has the possible advantage of very small downloads. Imagine, that instead of downloading all the source packages for KDE 3.0.4, you simply had to download the patch level difference for the source from KDE 3.0.3. The diff file would probably be less than 500k.
Of course, patch files would be too difficult to manage, so why not set up an rsync or cvs server, and use cvsup to grab the differences. Not from the production cvs, but from another set up by Gentoo. This would turn a bandwidth hungry dist into the lightest one of all. After downloading the initial sources, the updates would be noticably smaller than binary dists.
Of course, gentoo doesn't do this, but I use it anyway. :-)
amen!
;-)
as a long-term linux bigot (running on linux since the 1.1 days. kernel versions, that is) I'm now giving freebsd a serious try. my bsd bigot friends tell me that there's near zero that linux can do that fbsd can't. I know that its missing filesystem journalling (linux has reiser, ext3, xfs and jfs). but other than that, what else CAN'T freebsd do? so far, according a bsd bigot friend, nothing. all hardware that linux supports bsd also supports. maybe even better (to this day I don't trust linux and ide controllers. nor do I trust firewire or even usb, totally, with linux).
I'm going to really give bsd a try now. 4.7 is just out and while it takes some time to convert from linux's way of doing things to bsd's, its not a major hurdle.
for me, the big obstacle was "would there be things linux could do that bsd can't". and I'm told that's no longer the case.
so when it came time to build my next unix box (firewall or host), I'm now spending some time with freebsd rather than choosing YET ANOTHER linux distro. the fact that there's only ONE freebsd sure makes MY life a lot easier!!
oh, and the 'make world' thing is really cool. no linux distro really matches the cvsup/make-world deal that bsd has going. lockstep release from one vendor. wow
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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There are a few....
/usr/qt/2/, Qt 3 in /usr/qt/3/ etc...) this doesnt always work! Can end up with some painful instabilities needing things to be unmerged and then re-emerged again after
:)
- ebuilds arent perfect. some dont work, others have known problems. it isnt always perfect. things are usually fixed quickly though.
- version mismatches. although its kinda cunning and you can have multiple versions of things installed (Qt 2 in
- other version mismatches. some apps like autoconf 2.13, others like 2.5. you can easily change your 'active' one (export WANT_AUTOCONF_2_5="1" for 2.5) - but the ebuilds don't 'know' which one they want. Again, broken builds and more problems. Easily fixable but still a pain.
- upgrading doesn't get rid of old versions. Sometimes you really need to unmerge an old version of a program before emerging the new one or dependent apps will get confused and pick up the wrong versions of shared libs. I know this isn't meant to happen but it occasionally does..
- other weird stuff. recently I somehow lost my TEMP environment setting and emerge unpacked a fresh glibc version into / (still haven't cleaned up the mess..)
- cant resume an aborted build. start building big package (openoffice!). quit for whatever reason. have to start again from the beginning...
Don't get me wrong - I love Gentoo dearly, its my primary desktop that I spend 16 hours a day on doing all my work and all my pleasure. But nothing's perfect...
(and the support on the lists is truly excellent, so you're never completely lost..)
(and admittedly many of the problems above are as likely to be caused by the apps themselves as Gentoo..)
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hardware support? are you kidding? If you've got an sb audigy and/or nvidia video card, you'll be comming back to linux soon enough.
You wink, but it's true. That's why I left Gentoo. I got sick of the constant compiling, even on my 1GHz P3.
Now I follow Debian sid and I do just fine.
Is it requiring a network connection.
/usr/portage/distfiles but first I have to find out WHAT packages it wants to just install.
;)
Yeah, I know I can download all of the packages that it needs and put them in
Plus I'm in one of the far corners of the world (Santa Fe, NM) that DOESN'T have broadband everywhere so I have to do all this downloading over dial up.
I should just take my machine down to the lead guys house in Albuquerque and hook on to his hub to install.
Other than that, it looks pretty neat! nifty even.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
My system disk filled up a few weeks ago.
/var/dpkg/cache directory. About 9 versions of most packages. Every time you download a new version, Debian keeps the old ones.
It was a ~4gb volume; I found 1.5gb in the
Remember Debian users, apt-get autoclean is your friend.
I had a lot of trouble getting esoteric packages written by one guy for some strange task (that I happen to be working on too) had a lot of trouble installing on my previous distro, so I decided to try a source distro.
This one by FAR had the most documentation. And it had more docs than Debian, Mandrake, and Slackware for installation. So I decided to give it a try.
And I screwed up by not following the directions. Undaunted, I tried again. This time, I succeeded - without the help of the developers. Everything compiled perfectly - I had a working version of X with support for my video card, along with a full install of Apache, Gnome, KDE, IceWM, and my favorite development environments and text editors. It took me three days to succeed.
From that point forward, occasionally, I ran into problems. Unlike Mandrake, my previous distro, I found the solutions by going to the user forums for the site - it seems other people had problems similar to mine. A lot of the problems weren't even due to the distro - things like how upgrading postfix sometimes leads to a difference in how the alias files are stored (so that they have to be rebuilt) are things I would expect to have to scour the internet to find out, rather than just checking at my distro.
And the three times when I couldn't find the answer, I posted to a forum, and within hours (one time within minutes) I had my answer.
There sure is some brokenness with the distro - but to me its worth it. The documentation, while out of date, is still pretty useful, and the forums are the best support I've ever had from anyone for using Linux (including a local LUG, #linux, and #linuxhelp on Dalnet, #linux and #linuxhelp on EFnet, and my local net admin).
Now my computer nearly sings - I can install, uninstall, and fix problems faster than I ever have before, (even faster than I could with nice, user friendly options), and its only getting better.
Perhaps you have been a sysadmin for four years, and used linux-pmac, but perhaps you didn't get as many scars as you say. You don't like the kernel? They don't force you to use it, you know. You don't have to run it even once - you can use any kernel you want, if you're so inclined, even plain vanilla. Switch. Problem solved. Can't use simple compile flags? They wrote a huge 10 page html file about how to use them and documented the file with the compile flags so you'd get them right. I've NEVER been a sysadmin, and I didn't even doubt that I got them right. Can't stand the 5 minutes of doing stuff by hand? You know you can just do exactly what the guide says, right? A trained monkey, or the newbie I was when I first installed it could do it. Why don't you? It doesn't really take that long.
It sounds more like you gave up when you hit a snag than that you gave this distro a fair chance. One snag in the install of this distro can take 40 hours to fix. However, the install is only the beginning of a distro's use. Perhaps you think I'm acting haughty. I'm sorry if you take it this way; know that I write this without emotion, but with more experience in this distro. Ask for help from me when installing and I'll give it if I am able.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Here's an interesting article Why is KDE on Mandrake faster than on Gentoo?
Close, but not quite.
According to the Bible, there were two men with that honour. The other is Elijah - 2 Kings 2:11
I've always considered the Enoch passage to be quite vague - Genesis 5:24
Also he wasn't the only Enoch in the bible, Cain also had a son named Enoch - Genesis 4:17.
Perhaps the distro saw itself as the son of a murderer?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Freebsd has had SoftUpdates for UFS (disk file system) for quite a while. this does a more or less journaling type feature, although as far as I understand it's not quite a full JFS. it works nicely though, and no more FSCK. that's a bonus in my book.
and as far as hardware support, it's not really a matter of HOW much stuff is supported but how WELL it's supported. this is important when you actually want to do work, like have production servers tick along forever without randomly crashing. I wouldn't even begin to pretend that Free supports as much hardware as linux does, but that's mostly because there isn't a legion of 13 year old kids writing a slew of crap drivers for things like usb webcams and cheap ass network cards and god knowsw what else they bought at CompUSA. that sounds bad, but it's what it seems like much of the time. who gives a crap whether you can do "good performance IDE software RAID" ? who does that? seriously. if you wanted good RAID performance, you'd build a box using a serious hardware raid controller, with good scsi disks... and if you're someone who wants to argue with me here, then you're really not someone who gets it, and should stick to your linux distro of choice. pretty IRC interfaces aren't all what it's about, you know.
As far as compatibility with linux "software" goes, FreeBSD is a POSIX beast, and works just fine in that arena. it also has an optional linux compatibility layer where (sadly!) it will emulate the insane mess of libs and dependencies (glibc? hello? pick a version already) and run the software as if it was a linux ELF binary. this is handy when vendors do stupid things like distribute apps for hardware as linux binaries... I've run into this with Mitsubishi high-end UPS systems, and linux compatibility mode worked out A-OK. all done, QED. no need to compromise my network with a exploit prone system (besides the windows servers, of course!)
but really, as a former linux user from the days when slackware was new and really damn cool, I have to say that I like FreeBSD more. one of my coworkers forced me to use it, and once I sussed it out a bit it made so much more sense. things are ALWAYS IN THE SAME PLACE. this is important, so important I'll say it again. THINGS ARE ALWAYS IN THE SAME PLACE. this makes administration easy. installing applications is much simpler. cleaning things up is easier. restoring from backup is easier. it's great that your home linux box has some weird ass setup that makes sense to you, but start administrating hundreds of boxes built by a team of different people over the years. weird ass file system nonsense doesn't scale. move on.
Ports and the source tree- these clinched it for me. it's spiffy. you go into the directory, use the built in search tool to find an app to do what you want, and then install it from source. you can snarf the binary if you wanted, but why bother? we're using servers here, they have power, and we're not building KDE3 or something. (except of course when we are, of course.) I can't begin to say how spoiled I am by using the ports tree.
And building from source- what's easier about keeping your system up to date than syncing your source tree with one command? and then rebuilding your entire core system with another? poof! it's like magic. go figure. it's been there forever.
anyway, if you're a geek who needs to do server stuff and you'd like to cut down on the headaches, give freebsd a spin. we're not bad people and most of us work for a living. you get to avoid a lot of clueless brats and silly script kiddies. if we say "H4X0r" it's in jest. maybe it sounds bad, and if so, that's fine. either it appeals to you or it doesn't. thanks for listening.
EOM
I would have used Gentoo if it had a CD distribution that contains all the packages. It doesn't have to be the leatest versions. I'm not talking about stage 1 or 2 on CD, I'm talking about all the packages on a CD.
:( Having Gentoo packages on CDs will be of great help not only for me but might ease-up bandwidth requirements.
There are people like me who want to try it out but can't afford to have broadband.
Take-off every
I don't run Gentoo, but I built my system with LFS. I wanted to build my system from source for a reason other than optimizations: dependencies.
I like not having programs I use be dependant on some bizarre unknown little library or program that Red Hat or Mandrake saw fit to link to something important. (Requiring Sendmail to run a simple cron daemon? Requiring the installation of Vi?) When you build from source, you know that you won't be getting any missing library errors, and you know that your program won't die mysteriously because it can't find an odd little support program in the path.
Gentoo needs the ability to boot from floppy, and then install over ftp etc.
Oh I dunno. This works just fine in Gentoo:
emerge rsync
emerge -e world
That'll rebuild every program/library, etc gentoo has installed through portage. Sounds similar.
Checking releases? emerge rsync. emerge -up world. That'll show you whats new vs what you have compiled.
Sounds quite functional. and, because its linux, I can use accelerated opengl drivers for my nvidia card. Thats the one reason I dont use FreeBSD currently.
instead of just sitting around all day compiling glibc or whatever.
Every Gentoo luser I know snivels weekly about how some 'ebuild' he ran totally horked up his box, so that he had to start over again from scratch. Hell, these people re-install Gentoo more times in a month than most idiot Microsoft lusers re-install Windows in a year!
Fuck that - I need to be able to actually -use- my boxen. Slackware beats Gentoo every time if you want to actually do something useful with your machine for two or more days in a row. At least until I can figure out how to get someone to pay me for continuously recompiling glibc, heh.
I don't think anyone has posted that they would be taking a look at gentoo 1.4 - seems like it's it just sucks or it's great.
I'm running RH 7.2 on an Athlon 1600XP.. Looking at RH8 - it's now on 5 CDs with sources... which seems excessive. RH does seem to be taking the turn away from where my interests are as a hobbiest...
I first started on Slackware in 1993 on a 486. Brutally fun :) I later started using packaged distros but have been thinking recently a custom install would be beneficial for me since I've moved to AMD and most binary distros target Intel.
Connection speed for the install is not a problem: I have cable... I'll probably use my shared 10GB win/linux partition for the gentoo install.. If Imess it up, I'll at least have a working system.
I'm using grub under RH, so adding gentoo to the boot menu shouldn't be rocket science.
Has anyone considered using ghost (or whatever equivelent) to backup a gentoo install?
Anyway, question is to go with the 1.4 RC1 or wait for the release...
But what bytes is that in my small town here in Italy we don't have Broadband, and as you all know/should know you need a broadband connection, well it's not an absolute need, but it would make it go a hell of allot faster.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Gentoo has a BSD style ports system. You type a command (ie. "emerge gnome") and it downloads, configures with parameters you have set in your make.conf file, and then compiles it optimized for your system.
It's sweet when it works, but a royal pain when it fails. I downloaded the iso, installed it and immediately tried to emerge kde-base after getting gentoo up and running (which was very easy by the way). The emerge process for KDE took all day long between downloading the source and compiling, whereas on Red Hat or Debian it would have been done in minutes. Then to top it off, the X servers compiled by it were not functional because of an unresolved global. Something obviously was missing from their dependency graphs; other people who perhaps had emerged the missing piece in the course of other activites would not have had this problem.
Of course, I had the source code and in theory I could have dived in to figure out what was going on. In fact, I'm fairly accustomed to tweaking source code to get it to compile and work, but futzing around with X is not what I do for fun. I played around with the system in my spare time for the next week, trying out other things and attempting somewhat half heartedly to fix my X problem. Searches on the Gentoo web site and Google came up dry. Then the new Red Hat psyche CD's I'd burned beckoned, and that was that for Gentoo for the time being.
I had overall a mixed impression of Gentoo. I think portage is pretty slick. The X problems I had didn't really put me off on it. If I seriously needed X working on the machine, I'm sure I could have got it working. The problem is that when it comes time to set up a machine for some purpose, I usually don't want to be tinkering with it for days. And I'm not talking about futzing around with configurations options, just the routine task of getting the system installed and running takes too long. If it were my personal hobbyist system, no problem; but at work I'm often installing linux on a particular machine to solve a specific problem. I want it done and off my desk yesterday. It's irritating to have to, figuratively speaking, pop the cake in the oven and keep sticking it with a toothpick to see if its done. For that reason, I'd say it's a very superior choice for a hobbyist, especially given the effort they've made to put all the most bleeding edge features into it.
The article says emerge is going to be much faster in 1.4. Perhaps I'll give it a try again.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Portage is a great system, but it's still fairly new, and it needs some adjustments before it can be the completely kick-all-ass software management tool that the developers and users want it to be.
The best thing that you (or I, or anyone) can do is to feed these suggestions, bug reports, and changes back to the developers. Learn some Python, have a crack at the code, and see what happens.
Super ninja monkeys will one day rule the world!
It has the flexibility I need, without any sacrifice in power.
You can boot off of a old install cd and install the latest release. It has done all I have asked it to and no extras.
I do not have qt ,arts or KDE installed I don't use KDE and I can still compile programs requiring SDL development libs, because I have sdl devel libs installed which did not require arts now try that with other distributions. I get to use the system logger, cron tool, bootloader, mta, etc that I want from the very beginning.
Get a free ipod.
I did follow the instructions and when I got to the part where I type in:
insmod pcmcia_core
It could not find it. It also could not find the cardmgr -r command.
What is up with that? I could not even get the networking up because their instructions do not work on my system. I even downloaded the ISO twice and burned like 4 cd's trying to get it to work.
Maybe I missed something...
But Gentoo is finally bringing to linux what FreeBSD has had for who knows how long now. It has building from source and a good standard for keeping all the configuration files in the same place.
I like linux because of it's hardware support. There is always some hack available to get my newest toaster work on it. Besides, gentoo works faster than *BSD in almost every task you can throw it.
Even Robbins, the developer of Gentoo has migrated from BSD back to linux, just bringing the good things with him.
I have something that I'd like to request, however. I don't know how viable it is, but here goes: could we get some kind of progress meter for when we emerge packages? For instance, I emerged Open Office and it took a whopping 6 hours, which I was unprepared for. I know emerging varies wildly from system to system, so maybe not a time-dependent progress meter, but more of like a package-dependent progress meter? I'm not sure how it all works, but having _some_ kind of progress meter would be nice :)
Quote: ...so what are you waiting for?
That's precisely why I'm not going to use it: waiting. Waiting 8 hours for the bloody thing to compile KDE, because it "seems" to run faster...no thanks.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
What am I waiting for?... My Slackware box to break.
--#!
Yes FreeBSD works great for a lot of things until you want to use it to run Weblogic, Limewire, and Jedit! No JDK support means no FreeBSD! Yes I know the JDK is coming, but this does me no good now.
Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement. --Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication
Soft updates is not journalling, as you said.
The choice of filesystem is about more than just journalling. Reiserfs is good for lots of small files, for instance.
The stuff about things being in the same place.... that's the same argument always used about BSD.
I have some debian boxes. Guess what, everything is in the same place on all of them. My cousin has a debian box too... and things are in the same place on his computer as on all of mine. I have debian boxes at work, and they too have files in the same places as the ones at home.
Take hundreds of BSD boxes administred by different people over the years, and you can expect to find files in different places all over. If the packages needed are in ports, yes, things will stay homogeneous... but when you get into building and compiling other stuff... that's where mess happens.
I know- I always pull my binaries from mango.firepipe.net (the kde3 freebsd build mirror). I was just using an arbitrary example of some huge package that you usually wouldn't want to build. XFree is another good example.
EOM
exactly as I said- how many people would group running a serious application (weblogix) and running an application for piracy (LimeWire, a Gnutella P2P client) ? if you're so concerned about having quality java support for a commercial app, you would run it on a Sun box. I know that JDK support and app support for linux are better now, but would you risk your job and reputation on it? I hope not. that's why we have budgets, and if yours isn't enough to truly build a good infrastructure for whatever applications you have then you shouldn't be building them to start with.
that being said, I'm running serious enterprise java apps on a freebsd box using the JDK right now (OpenNMS, available at www.opennms.org - great enterprise SNMP monitoring system.)
use whatever trips your trigger. if pirating mp3s and movies is that important to you, then I guess linux is your platform of choice!
EOM
So now that I'm all juiced to try gentoo.. I'm at a stumbling block.
I want to try it on my sony vaio z505le...
I don't have a cdrom on the laptop.
The floppy drive is USB.
It won't read a 1.77 MB tomsrtbt image.
The debian rescue/root won't work because root won't load because USB isn't supported in the install kernel.
The mandrake install disk has no shell.
So.. where does that leave me? Anyone have any ideas?
On a personal note, please help out Daniel Robbins, if you can. No affiliations. However, until a few weeks ago he was in need of alternate sources of income. A posting on slashdot should do the trick.
Here's the actual email sent to the gentoo-announce mailing list. A personal request from Daniel Robbins
Do help out the guy, if you can.
Disclaimer, I have never met the guy, or contacted him via electronic or any other media.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
I use SuSE Linux 8.0. It is packed with binary distribution and source code distributions (for most of the software). So, why would should I switch to Gentoo? I have all the .src.rpms I need on the SuSE installation disks. If I have the urge to recompile some software, I can do so off the src.rpms with no hassle at all. I assure you that nothing off the original SuSE CD is on here (from the kernel to windowmaker). Once Gentoo offers packages off its CDs I will be ready for it, otherwise, Gentoo is just a dream for the many dialup users.
and how about the portage system? Almost every mainstream distribution out there is integrating online software package management into their distributions (Yes, SuSE included).
Here's the Gentoo Forums link w/ instructions.
BTW, Tom's Root Boot is "muy bueno", it's got scads of NIC drivers (I've tried it on Intel Pro100, Intel EXP16 (!), 3Com 3c9xx, 3c509b, and an eight dollar Linksys 10/100 card. Wget is on there. It can create/mount ext2/3 and FAT16/32 partitions. I'm now using this at work to build up old PCs that need (spit) Windows 95 on them but have no CD-ROM. I just tarred up the CABs and threw them on a web server. Now I boot them w/ Tom's, fdisk, format FAT32, wget the CABs, reboot, build, ?????, Profit!!!. Huzzah!
A better measure is:So, in fact, there are 2532 packages in the Gentoo portage system as of yesterday.
Just out of curiosity, I have the following number of ebuilds installed.Since I tend to clean out the distfiles directory very religiously, here's my count of files in that directory.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
I like the concept of Gentoo, as I find my system gets in a mess as soon as you leave the comfort of RPMs to install a newer version of something from source that hasn't made it into the official distribution yet.
/etc and try to keep things the same?
But... how can I install it on top of my existing Linux installations without having to reformat and reconfigure everything again from scratch? e.g. firewall, sendmail, etc... Will it detect existing files in
I copied this sig from someone else (but where did they get it from?)
The ebuild system kicks ass. Never has it been easier to hack your packages without losing dependency checking. Right now, I'm running KDE 3.1 beta2 on Qt 3.1 beta2. For awhile, I was running XFree 4.2.99 and Qt 3.0.5 with Xft2 patches. All I had to do was copy the relevent ebuilds, change a few lines, and voila, new package! The simplicity of portage makes it easy for people to make their own ebuilds. Check out the Gentoo forums and you'll find all sorts of ebuilds for totally experimental programs (like Phoenix).
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'll attribute the empty bravado and flawed logic to someone who needs a religion, much like what a Minnesota governor alluded to in a Playboy interview. If its a troll, kudos, its brilliantly executed.
Freebsd has had SoftUpdates for UFS (disk file system) for quite a while. this does a more or less journaling type feature, although as far as I understand it's not quite a full JFS. it works nicely though, and no more FSCK.
Eliminating fsck is not the primary reason to choose a journaling filesystem. When properly selected, it enhances the integrity of a filesystem after a crash. SoftUpdates does not accomplish this. More telling is someone who chooses his distribution knowing there is a distinct shortcoming, and yet implies its half-measure is comparably acceptable to the real thing.
and as far as hardware support, it's not really a matter of HOW much stuff is supported but how WELL it's supported.FreeBSD device support comes from the same trough as Linux. In most cases, its the unpaid contributions of computer enthusiasts. A new FreeBSD driver is just as prone to bugs as a Linux one. FreeBSD maintainers and developers do not possess 31337 powers that the mere Linux contributors do not. They're merely a little pickier and cagier about the QA and release process. And in return, you have a lot more hardware that you cannot run on your PC. Some people live in the real world, where they don't have the luxury of increasing the expense of their PC to spend their time handpicking components (that work).
[...] who gives a crap whether you can do "good performance IDE software RAID" ? who does that? seriously. if you wanted good RAID performance, you'd build a box using a serious hardware raid controller, with good scsi disks... and if you're someone who wants to argue with me here, then you're really not someone who gets it, and should stick to your linux distro of choice. pretty IRC interfaces aren't all what it's about, you know.
THIS, from the guy who says my half-assed filesystem implementation is perfectly adequate? People go to software raid when they can't afford hardware raid and want more reliability than NO raid. You're the one who doesn't get it, Mr. Ivory Tower. Pretty IRC interfaces??? What the f*ck are you talking about? This is Linux (and I'm a Slackware user). Who the hell uses it because its "prettier"???
As far as compatibility with linux "software" goes, FreeBSD is a POSIX beast, and works just fine in that arena.
Again, when is a half-measure preferable to the real thing? Why screw around with seeing if this Linux package will work under the BSD Compatibility system, when you can pick a distribution that is matched to it and will run after executing a mere rpm/apt-get/installpkg command???
QED. no need to compromise my network with a exploit prone system (besides the windows servers, of course!)
1) Supposed Linux compatibility does not equate to a more secure system. No logical correlation there.
2) Security in a software distribution is merely the vigilant configuration of software and restriction of desirable features. If the NSA thought otherwise, they would have based their SecureLinux distribution on FreeBSD.
THINGS ARE ALWAYS IN THE SAME PLACE. this makes administration easy. installing applications is much simpler. cleaning things up is easier. restoring from backup is easier.
The only intelligent thing you said in this entire post. I am sincere in that statement and I agree completely with your statement. But then you go on to criticize weird-assed customizations, without realizing FreeBSD is just as vulnerable to it as Linux. Linux filesystem arrangements do not mutate any more than FreeBSD systems.
Ports and the source tree- these clinched it for me. [...] I can't begin to say how spoiled I am by using the ports tree.
And realize no one using Linux cares.
anyway, if you're a geek who needs to do server stuff and you'd like to cut down on the headaches, give freebsd a spin. we're not bad people and most of us work for a living. you get to avoid a lot of clueless brats and silly script kiddies.
The only thing your post has told me is if you want to be an elitist compusnob, you're little weak in the the reasoning department and wish to mask it by advocating an elitist OS, you have more time to twiddle with your OS (than just plug-in the working product), you have more money to spend for a component FreeBSD supports, and need to replace your religious faith with a OS distribution, give FreeBSD a spin.
Most script kiddies will be running apache cgi, ftp, sendmail, and lpr exploit scripts. Somehow they will be miraculously ineffective in FreeBSD, even though they use the same codebase. Its the Divine Providence, he'll tell you. The people that care about security will know they need to spend their time understanding the vulnerabilities and prevent them in any operating system they maintain, not erroneously adopt an OS as a security crutch.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Actually I think Jesus did die.
I seem to recall a big cross on top of a hill...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Those dependencies are still there, actually. One of the most annoying things about compiling from source is that configure scripts have this tendency to pick up pieces of your system you may have because you were testing out this or that or the other thing and decide they can depend on their existence.
Then, you try to remove that program you never use (maybe it's even got a security hole), and instead of the package manager telling you you're broken, you just find out next time you try to run the program that depends on it...
Now, this could be mitigated very well by a very tight set of configure patches and arguments, but finding those out is very difficult and error-prone.
Sendmail I can understand, although it really should be a dependency on a MDA of any kind. cron mails non-empty results to the user. If we're still talking about cron, vi would fill an "editor" class, which is needed for crontab -e.
... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a
programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting
down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That
behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and
never when standing.
Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal
know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though,
know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to
hypothesize: was there a loose with under the carpet, or problems with static
electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible.
An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard:
the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a
touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led
astray by hunting and pecking.
-- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985
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